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CAS Luncheon Series

Thursday, September 12 at 12:30
Denison Arts & Sciences Building
1080 Broadway
Room 146

Islam cannot be a “Tamil” religion in Sri Lanka because Muslims in the island do not consider themselves to be Tamils. Although the Muslims (Moors) of Sri Lanka are native Tamil speakers with a significant literary tradition –  many of whom live as farmers, fishermen, and shopkeepers side-by-side with Hindu and Christian Tamils in the northern and eastern parts of the island  –  their political stance since the early years of the 20th century has been staunchly “non-Tamil.” Instead of identifying as Muslim Tamils like their neighboring co-religionists in Tamil Nadu, South India, they have chosen the singular term “Muslim,” a label that asserts religious identity over language, and putative Arab ancestry over regional South Indian migration and trade networks. The current situation is an artifact of colonial and post-independence tri-ethnic rivalries, further aggravated by anti-Muslim violence committed by the Tamil-led LTTE as well as by militant Buddhist monks. This illustrated talk will explore the dimensions of this ethnic split and discuss its contemporary political and religious consequences in Sri Lanka.

Dennis McGilvray is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Anthropology at the University of ����ֱ�� Boulder and the past President of the American Institute of Sri Lankan Studies.  He was also the founding director of the Center for Asian Studies. His ethnographic interests are in South Asia, with a research focus on the Tamils and Muslims of south India and Sri Lanka.  His book, Crucible of Conflict (2008), examines matrilineal Hindu and Muslim society in the Tamil-speaking region of eastern Sri Lanka, an area that was deeply affected by the island’s civil war. He also led an NSF research team after the Indian Ocean tsunami (McGilvray and Gamburd, eds. Tsunami Recovery in Sri Lanka (2010). His recent publications focus upon popular Sufism and anti-Muslim conflict in Sri Lanka. His skill with a camera is displayed in his photo-book Symbolic Heat: Gender, Health, and Worship among the Tamils of Sri Lanka and South India (1998). At the moment, he is working on a book manuscript entitled A House for Every Daughter that describes women-centered households and female dowry property in Sri Lanka and South India.